such a town, and was, moreover, represented in the General Court of the Province, though no record of any choice is to be found until the next year, when the same men who represented them the year before were again chosen.* The first Corn Mill in town was erected in 1722, and as an inducement to build it, the town voted that it should forever be exempt from taxation. It stood, as is believed, on the north side of the great post road, about half a mile from the meeting house. Although quite a number of town meetings were held, and their transactions recorded, previous to 1724, we do not find his Majesty's name made use of, in any way, previous to that time, when a meeting was first called "in his Majesty's name." This, however, was rather the result of accident, or imperfect records, than from any want of loyalty, or from the preponderance of republican feelings; since, at that day, loyalty and patriotism were convertible terms, and even at a later day, some of the leading men in town were distinguished for their loyalty.† We have not been able to ascertain to what extent the inhabitants of the town suffered from the depredations of the Indians. They undoubtedly shared in the horrors of the wars which the natives carried on against the people of the province. In 1726, the town was *The Hon. John Minsie was the person elected. He was a leading man in town and appears to have been very respectable and influential. He removed from Roxbury to Leicester, and is usually stiled Judge Minsie in the records of the town. When or where he held that office, we have not been able to ascertain. He resided upon a tract of 500 acres, which he owned, around the Henshaw Pond, and was long remembered for having introduced the "White Weed," principally, we believe, on account of its beauty. † Among these, we would name with respect, the Hon. Thomas Steel, Esq. a native of Boston, who removed to Leicester and built a dwelling house about half a mile east of the meeting house which is yet standing (called the Southgate house.) He was liberally educated, and graduated at Cambridge, in 1730, and stands upon the catalogue of that year, when each student's name was arranged according to his relative rank in life, the fourth in order; the first being the famous Peter Oliver, to whom the province afterwards owed so much of its difficulties and distress. Mr. Steel, was bred a merchant, and pursued that business till his removal from Boston to Leicester, where he also kept a store. He was, from 1756 to 1774, an associate judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Worcester County, and always remained firm in his loyalty to the King. It is noticable, that the most spirited resolutions of the town against the aggressions of the mother country, previous to 1770, are recorded in the town records in his hand writing-a kind of involuntary treason that he dare not refuse to commit. He was wealthy when he first came to this town; but owing to misfortunes, his wealth became very much reduced. His influence, until the revolution, was, deservedly great; for he was a man of intelligence and integrity. He was several times chosen to represent the town, in the General Court, and successively held most of the responsible offices. at the expense of erecting a garrison, as it was called, around the house of Mr. Parsons, to protect them from the attacks of the savages. This was a little north east of the meeting house. There were other garrisons, for the same purpose, erected in other parts of the town. One of these, was near the dwelling house, belonging to the Henshaw family, near the Henshaw pond, and its outlines may be traced now. The house occupied by John King, Esq. in the south part of Leicester, upon the Oxford road, was also, as is believed, a garrison house, and marks of musket balls are yet said to be visible in parts of it, which can be referred only to the times of the Indian wars. Another garrison was near Mr. Jonah Earle's dwelling house. The town seems to have been troubled in its fiscal concerns for some time after its settlement. The inhabitants, immediately upon their removing here, assumed the expenses of schools and the support of a minister, which, together with the necessary highways they were compelled to make, rendered their expenses burdensome; especially, as much of the land in town became, in the course of years, either the property of a few individuals in town, or of those, who, residing out of it, were exempt from the burdens of the resident proprietors. They lived too, at a time when false notions of wealth and public economy prevailed. An unhealthy, and almost worthless currency, had inundated the state, and the general complaint of a scarcity of money prevailed throughout the province. The inhabitants of this town, in common with the majority of the people of the province, were deceived into an opinion that the difficulties under which all were laboring might be removed by new emissions of paper money, which must ever be worthless, when it ceases to be the representative of real wealth, and so redeemable that its nominal, may become its actual value, at the will of the holder. In 1727, an emission of £60,000 in paper money, was made by the Legislature, and loaned to the people of the province, the interest arising from which was to go towards the support of government. This town appointed trustees to receive its proportion of this grant and to loan it to the inhabitants, so that no one should have more than ten, nor less than five pounds. The question as to the value of the currency, from time to time, in the early history of New England, though interesting and important in a historical point of view is attended with too much labor and difficulty and would occupy too much time for us to attempt to settle. Its fluctuations were so frequent, and its depreciation often so great, that what, at first sight, may seem enormous sums, when reduced by the scale of depreciation, for the time being, dwindle into comparative insignificance. The depreciation of the money was not so great, before the year 1745, as it afterwards was. The only criterion which we possess to ascertain any thing like its standard value is, a comparison of the prices of labor and produce at different times, during our history. In 1726, four shillings per day, were allowed by the town for labor upon a "garrison" they were then building. In 1754, two shillings per day for men, and one shilling for a yoke of oxen were allowed upon the highways. In 1774, three shillings per day for men were allowed. In 1780, so rapid had the money depreciated, that six pounds per day were paid for labor on the highways. In 1775, the delegate in the Provincial Congress from this town, received five shillings per day for his services. The same sum was paid, in 1788, to representatives in the General Court, while Senators had five shillings and sixpence, and Counsellors six shillings, per day. The compensation of members of Congress from this State was fixed, that year, at four dollars per day. The next year, this town gave their representative but four shillings per day. In 1790, labor on the highways was fixed at three shillings per day, and the next year, at two. In the year 1752, one pound, lawful money, was paid for boarding a school master six weeks; and in 1779, the member of the convention that formed the Constitution, from this town, paid one hundred and eighty two dollars per week, for his board. In 1780, the ratio of depreciation of the old money was, as 40 to 1. In 1776, a committee was appointed, agreeably to a resolve of the General Court, to fix the prices at which labor, produce, &c. then stood, and this estimation must have been made in reference to a currency then at par. The list of articles, prepared and reported by this committee, was very large, and we will only transscribe a few items from the report, for the purpose of comparing them with the same articles at the present day. Labor, per day, in the summer, was estimated at three shillings; and in the winter, at half that sum: by the year, at twenty pounds. Men's shoes, at eight shillings per pair; horse hire, at two pence per mile: shoeing a horse, five and sixpence; a good gun and bayonet at eighty four shillings; Indian corn, at three shillings; Rye, at four and sixpence; wheat, at six shillings per bushel: Butter, nine pence; Beef, three and a half pence per pound; salt pork, at eight pence, per pound and "Toddy and Flip" at one shilling "per mug." The depreciation of the currency was not confined to the emis sions from this state. In 1785, five dollars of the Rhode Island currency, and eight dollars of that of New Hampshire, were worth but three shillings here. But we are approaching too extensive a subject for our means or time to master, and must therefore leave it for some curious and patient antiquarian. It would be impossible to fix the actual state of the depreciation at different times; since it was so rapid, and withal so fluctuating, that a person was chosen by this town, in 1786, to report, as often as once a week, to the inhabitants, the value of the paper money and public securities. The early records of the town are quite imperfect, and only a partial account of the transactions they purport to record, can be gleaned from them: we can, therefore, hardly pursue a correct chronological order in relating those circumstances which we have been able to gather respecting its history. Many of the votes passed and some of the officers chosen are not perfectly obvious in their necessity or policy. We can hardly conceive the necessity for a "clerk of the market" in a place where none bought, and few sold any thing of a marketable character, yet that office, as well as that of deer-reeve, was regularly filled for a great many years after the incorporation of the town. Another officer who was chosen annually for many years, but, though a statute officer, is now discontinued, was a "warden." The best solution of this was offered by an elderly gentleman, of whom we enquired the use, that coming from Old England our fathers wanted to have every thing here as they had left them at home. The inhabitants were troubled, for many years, by the proprie tors of the lands, most of which then lay common, taking cattle from abroad to pasture upon these common lands; and in order to prevent this, they levied a tax of ten shillings per head, upon all cattle so taken to be fed; and a still more singular vote was passed, that all rams running at large should be "free plunder," and any one who should take such, might have them, for his own. Although, as we have seen, the people of the town must have been far from wealthy, for many years after settling here, they were not burthened with taxes for the support of the poor until 1745, when provision was made for the support of a poor child that happened to be in need: not many years after, a small sum was appropriated to help a poor man to provide himself with a cow. It is impossible now to ascertain the precise amount which has been expended for the support of the poor of the town since that time. We may safely assert, that from five to eight hundred dollars are annually expended, for this purpose, at present. The people of the town were affected, in common with those of the whole of New England, by the early wars with the French, and furnished men, from time to time, to aid the expeditions which were carried on by the Province. The meagerness of the records leaves us in uncertainty, as to the numbers actually engaged in these wars, from this town. But when the Grand Canada expedition, as it was called, was planned by Governor Shirley, in 1746, to drive the French from their North American possessions, this town furnished men for the army then raised, and, as an additional compensation for their sacrifices, their taxes were abated by the town. Every thing favored a prevalence of loyal feelings among the people of New England, at this period, and in Leicester, no less than in other parts of the country; some of its most leading men were natives of Great Britain, and had all the ties of kindred, besides the natural feeling of attachment to the place of their birth, to bind them to the mother country. Richard Southgate, and Daniel Denny, both of them influential men in their day, were natives of Coombs, in Suffolk county, in England.* They left Coombs in June, 1715, and arrived in Boston in September. The next year, Southgate went back to England and returned with his family, and Dr. Thomas Prince, who had been the clergyman of Coombs, and was afterwards settled in Boston, the venerable annalist of New England. They arrived in Boston, in July, 1717; in the March following, Southgate and family, and Denny and family, removed to Leicester. Mr. Denny settled upon the farm, still in possession of the family, about two miles south east from the meeting-house. He was a brother of Dr. Prince's wife, and of Major Denny, as he is called, who settled, about the year 1728, in Maine, where he became a man of wealth and influence, being, at the time of his death, first Judge of the "court of pleas," and president of the court of sessions in the county of Lincoln.t Richard Southgate was born in 1673, and died at the age of 88 years, in 1758. Daniel Denny was born 1694, and died April 16, 1760, at the age of 66 years. +Richard Southgate had two sons, Stuart and Richard: the first, the father of the Hon. Robert Southgate, of Scarborough, Maine, and of the late Capt. John Southgate, whose family still reside in Leicester. The children of Richard were more numerous, and one branch of his family only, bearing his name, remains in Leicester-the children of his son Isaac. Daniel Denny had two sons, Thomas and Samuel. Both of them we shall |